Denver is a better place to live than Chicago

Denver is closer to national parks (Yellowstone, and Glacier) than Chicago

It is easier to go water skiing, mountain biking, rock climbing in Denver than Chicago. If you like skiing, Denver is one of the best places in the USA to live.

Reasons to disagree:

Big deal. Denver has the mountains. Chicago has the great lakes. You can go trout fishing in Denver, but you can go deep-lake fishing, or big lake sailing in Chicago. The lake is just as pretty as the mountains.

The rent is "too damn high". Home prices have sky rocketed. I hope we are not in another bubble.

It is very confusing to get used to driving in down town Denver.

Some of the City lines up with the river, some of it lines up with North South

By preventing growth, government officials artificially keep housing prices too high. This might feel like it is good for current home owners, but it makes people spend too much money on housing. Also, when high density development is prevented from being built relatively close to the city, it forces people to drive longer commutes. This results in more smog, CO2, and poor life stiles for those who commute.

It is very strange that the light rail system only goes south and one line goes west... Why such segregation and preferential treatment? Why wouldn't the city treat down town as the center, and try to grow equally in all directions?

There are too many drug addicts, and alcoholics peeing in the streets and bothering people in Denver.

My mother in law was yelled at by a homeless person the very first time she visited Denver. She was scared.

The girls that work in my office don't like to come down town at night because of them. They have all had homeless people follow, and yell at them. They all have horror stories from friends who have had worse things happen to them.

Young girls feel safe in down town Chicago, in the loop, walking around at 2am in the morning. There is no place in Denver that feels as safe as the shopping areas of Chicago at any time of the day, let alone at 2am in the morning. Denver could improve the way they deal with their homeless.

Many women and children don't feel safe downtown Denver when their almost a hundred dirty mentally ill people just standing around all the time near the homeless shelter that is located right in the center of a city that you want people to feel safe in. You see these dirty smelly people everywhere. I saw a sign yesterday that said: Cash, Grass, or Ass. I did not know homeless people were allowed to ask for sex or drugs, but there are kids around, and it makes me sick.

People in Denver think their city is better than any other city, and that, by extension, they are better than people who live in other places. They make self righteous videos about their mountains. They don't have enough self awareness or geographical information to realize that other places also have mountains. They make reverential movies about their sports teams, which is pretty pathetic, unless of course you are from here... which in that case, these are the best sports teams ever...

Score:

# of reasons to agree: +5

# of reasons to disagree: -6

# of reasons to agree with reasons to agree: +3

# of reasons to agree with reasons to disagree: -1

Total Idea Score: +2

Don't like the score? It is easy to change the score. Just post a reason to agree or disagree with the overall idea, or any of the reasons and the score will change.

People from Denver love Denver.
I don't think anyone should feel like they are better than other people, because they live in a better place. Some times you meet people from a place they think is great, and they act like they are better than you because they are from that place. Every place has some good and bad, and just because you live in a good place does not make you better than other people.

They often have these bumper stickers that have the Denver Mountains Skyline, with words that say "Native". You don't know why people put these stickers on their cars, but you assume most of them think they are somehow better because they were born here. They don't like the new people moving into their town.

As someone who has just moved here, this rubs me a bit wrong. I like Denver. It has a good job which brought me here. It is closer to my family in Boise than Salt Lake. It also seems like it has some other cool stuff. I guess you can cheer for the home team, but don't go to far. I propose that there is nothing in Denver that you can't find equally as good in other cities, and that the combination of things in Denver, is not that much better than other cities. US News, CNN Money, and other places rank cities by crime, economy, cultural events, housing, and transportation. Talking to people in Denver you would think that Denver is at the top of every single of these lists. Denver is not on the Top 10 of US News. Forbes Ranks Denver Metro #5, which is pretty good, for doing business. But they rank Provo Utah as number #1, so can we take that list seriously?

Denver might have a hard time comparing to Oregon, San Francisco, Boston, New York, or Houston, depending on what you wanted. There are parts of Denver that are better than all of these cities, but all of these cities has aspects that are better than Denver. It just depends on what you are looking for. But people from Denver should not feel self righteous, because there are lots of other great places to live.